Geographic variations in a model of physician treatment choice with social interactions

Mary Burke, Gary Fournier () and Kislaya Prasad

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2010, vol. 73, issue 3, 418-432

Abstract: Region-specific norms of behavior are a widespread phenomenon. In the case of medical practice, numerous studies have found that geographic location exerts an inordinate influence on the choice of treatments and procedures. This paper shows how the presence of social influence on treatment decisions can help explain this phenomenon. We construct a theoretical model in which physicians' treatment choices depend on patients' characteristics and on the recent choices of nearby peers--either because there are local knowledge spillovers or because physicians want to conform to local practice patterns. In this setting, regional differences in the patient mix give rise to geographically divergent treatment patterns--the treatment a patient receives depends on where she lives. Investigation of Florida data reveals significant geographic variation in treatment rates consistent with the predictions of our model. Implications for patient welfare are explored.

Keywords: Geographic; variations; in; medicine; Evolutionary; game; theory; Interacting; particle; systems; Social; influence; Local; interactions; Medical; practice; guidelines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-2681(09)00275-3
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Geographic variations in a model of physician treatment choice with social interactions (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:73:y:2010:i:3:p:418-432

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().